Posted on 04/02/2008 3:39:20 PM PDT by neverdem
There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who think it's perfectly reasonable to strip-search a 13-year-old girl suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school, and the kind who think those people should be kept as far away from children as possible. The first group includes officials at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona, who in 2003 forced eighth-grader Savana Redding to prove she was not concealing Advil in her crotch or cleavage.
It also includes two judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, who last fall ruled that the strip search did not violate Savana's Fourth Amendment rights. The full court, which recently heard oral arguments in the case, now has an opportunity to overturn that decision and vote against a legal environment in which schoolchildren are conditioned to believe government agents have the authority to subject people to invasive, humiliating searches on the slightest pretext.
Safford Middle School has a "zero tolerance" policy that prohibits possession of all drugs, including not just alcohol and illegal intoxicants but prescription medications and over-the-counter remedies, "except those for which permission to use in school has been granted." In October 2003, acting on a tip, Vice Principal Kerry Wilson found a few 400-milligram ibuprofen pills (each equivalent to two over-the-counter tablets) and one nonprescription naproxen tablet in the pockets of a student named Marissa, who claimed Savana was her source.
Savana, an honors student with no history of disciplinary trouble or drug problems, said she didn't know anything about the pills and agreed to a search of her backpack, which turned up nothing incriminating. Wilson nevertheless instructed a female secretary to strip-search Savana under the school nurse's supervision, without even bothering to contact the girl's mother.
The secretary had Savana take off all her clothing except her underwear. Then she told her to "pull her bra out and to the side and shake it, exposing her breasts," and "pull her underwear out at the crotch and shake it, exposing her pelvic area." Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between drug warriors and child molesters.
"I was embarrassed and scared," Savana said in an affidavit, "but felt I would be in more trouble if I did not do what they asked. I held my head down so they could not see I was about to cry." She called it "the most humiliating experience I have ever had." Later, she recalled, the principal, Robert Beeman, said "he did not think the strip search was a big deal because they did not find anything."
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that a public school official's search of a student is constitutional if it is "justified at its inception" and "reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place." This search was neither.
When Wilson ordered the search, the only evidence that Savana had violated school policy was the uncorroborated accusation from Marissa, who was in trouble herself and eager to shift the blame. Even Marissa (who had pills in her pockets, not her underwear) did not claim that Savana currently possessed any pills, let alone that she had hidden them under her clothes.
Savana, who was closely supervised after Wilson approached her, did not have an opportunity to stash contraband. As the American Civil Liberties Union puts it, "There was no reason to suspect that a thirteen-year-old honor-roll student with a clean disciplinary record had adopted drug-smuggling practices associated with international narcotrafficking, or to suppose that other middle-school students would willingly consume ibuprofen that was stored in another student's crotch."
The invasiveness of the search also has to be weighed against the evil it was aimed at preventing. "Remember," the school district's lawyer recently told ABC News by way of justification, "this was prescription-strength ibuprofen." It's a good thing the school took swift action, before anyone got unauthorized relief from menstrual cramps.
© Copyright 2008 by Creators Syndicate Inc.
Since the issue is normative - what by the standards of our society constitutes a "reasonable" search - the collective feelings of the community very much are ALL THAT MATTERS.
I'm not responsible for your inability to learn the facts of the case. Willful ignorance resists education.
8,710 viewings of your absurd effort to justify strip searching a teenage girl for Advil. Keep going.
Nope. What matters is if a 13 year old girl knew her rights and that she had the right to refuse a strip search (without probable cause, with the question of "reasonable suspicion") requested by state authorities without suffering penalty.
BTW you seem to have dropped the state rights argument fast enough when I pointed out that this is a non-issue since the Arizona Constitution adopts the Federal Constitution.
The ACLU doesn't set the standards of our society, no matter how much you want centralized one size fits all government.
Everyone here gets the facts. We got it as stated. We got it as restated by YOU. We don't argue about the facts. That is settled. Under the facts you cite, we are outraged. You aren't. What do we deduce about your moral sensiblities or suitability for being around children, or people, in fact, from your view that under the facts, the state did no wrong?
And you think that means they turned control of their local schools over to the federal government. The logic of the left is strange indeed.
You've rejected them at every turn and invented "facts" out of thin air.
And you feel that she didn't. No facts or sources needed. You have your feelings.
The ACLU argument is a red-herring. It is WE THE PEOPLE who set the standards of our society. WE THE PEOPLE including the People of the State of Arizona sought to constrain the powers of the state, both Federal and State. The People of the State of Arizona formed a pact to constrain the powers of their state government in accordance with the limits of the US constitution. This has nothing to do with centralized government, your other red herring.
I have not rejected the objective facts at all. What I reject is your view that the state did no wrong.
It is irrelevant. Her rights are constraints on the power of the state to act. Furthermore, she is a minor, and whether she did or didn't is irrelevant.
From the article you're embracing:
As the American Civil Liberties Union puts it, "There was no reason to suspect that a thirteen-year-old honor-roll student with a clean disciplinary record had adopted drug-smuggling practices associated with international narcotrafficking, or to suppose that other middle-school students would willingly consume ibuprofen that was stored in another student's crotch."
It is WE THE PEOPLE who set the standards of our society.
And you want the federal courts to take those local powers away.
And of course the children and parents are essentially powerless in the face of the public education leviathan, to the point that there is union of parents that purports to represent the interests of all parents.
Private schools allow for a much saner producer/consumer relationship, with individual parents having precisely the amount of power that's appropriate.
It seems crazy for a country of people who claim to respect the positive power of the marketplace to try and remove it from as many facets of our life as possible.
With the federal courts creating and defining those "right" ad hoc, at the behest of the ACLU.
Which facts-genuine facts and not "facts"- have I invented out of thin air?
What you are attempting to portray as a factual dispute is a dispute over the legal interpretation of the propriety of the state's actions. That is what we are disagreeing about and stop trying to turn it into a disagreement over fact.
The state did what the facts state that they did. The question is was the actions of the state proper, or should these jackbooted thugs be sued for all their property and sacred honor. You think the former. We think the latter. When this gets sent back for trial, a jury of the peers of the school will get to determine the propriety of the actions and the damages they will have to pay.
And that will the the judgment of the people based on their collective view of the norms of our society.
Nope with the 4th ammendment adopted by the constitution of the state of Arizona describing those rights.
Since it is a right defined by the US constitution, it is within the power of the Federal Courts to interpret and apply those rights to the facts of the case.
The age of consent to sexual activity in Arizona is 18 years old. What age do you think is appropriate to give consent to disrobing in front of adult strangers?
There is no local power to violate the 4th amendment. The people of the State of Arizona conceded that in their own constitution.
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